Stream: Wu-Tang Clan f. Kool G Rap, "Rivers of Blood"

I spent a large part of yesterday listening to Ghostface's "Camay." It's a great song but I couldn't tell you why I listened to it so many times. Maybe it's that it perfectly captures what is so great about those early Wu records—that lush ghostliness that is as obsessed with piercing through layers of blunt smoke as it is playing the shadowy corners. It's a sound that, for better or worse, Wu-Tang fans are always looking for from the members. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they get an approximation of it. But dudes age, interests change, sometimes you just want to try new things. "Rivers of Blood" has a lot of the stuff that you might want from a Wu-Tang song. Raekwon still sounds really cool whenever he says Somalians, which is actually pretty often, Ghostface still sounds like he's busting down a door as he's rapping, there's even a Kool G Rap guest spot. If you wanted to give any rapper a consistency award, it'd be him. Frank Dukes, who produced the track, shies away from the drugged out funk that RZA does well, instead going maximal with downtuned guitars, organ and a bunch of dissonant horns courtesy of BadBadNotGood. It's probably not entirely what anyone ever loved about Wu-Tang, but it also proves that these dudes can still get excited about rapping, and I'll be able to appreciate that forever.